Hannibal, MO: We are tied up alongside in Hannibal. It turns out that the citizens of this burg have decided to make it into a Mark Twain theme park.
You buy a ticket that admits you to a variety of Twain-themed sites, including his boyhood home. There is also the cave Twain had the boys get lost in and a villain locked in fatally.
I understand the impulse to profit by a widely shared interest but I am disinclined to participate therein. As the son of two well-beloved but long dead Missouri natives, I believe I have an understanding of the place without being subjected to theme-park-style simplification and such.
Plus the weather is rainy and who wants to get wet? The DrsC choose to stay aboard. I am going to cherish Tom, Huck, Jim, Aunt Polly, and the eternally adolescent and lovely Becky Thatcher in my imagination as I have for more decades than I choose to admit.
Not to mention the curious cat to which Tom fed pain-killer. Its descendants probably prowl these precincts to this day, killing the odd river rat for sport.
